Bronte wrote:Penn does well on the NLJ survey. But is it enough to say Penn is in another league from other lower T14s? On every one of those except 2006, Penn is either below another lower T14 or within 5 percentage points of another lower T14. Further, Cornell and Northwestern are also often at the top of the chart.

By that criteria no school is distinguishable from the lower T14. Sure every other T14 finished near or above Penn in at least one year, but what sets Penn apart is its consistency in finishing near the top of those rankings every year. That's why risk averse law students are all over the nuts of Penn (and to a lesser extent Northwestern.) 2011 was just an extension of what we'd been seeing since 2005.

Tiago Splitter wrote:By that criteria no school is distinguishable from the lower T14. Sure every other T14 finished near or above Penn in at least one year, but what sets Penn apart is its consistency in finishing near the top of those rankings every year. That's why risk averse law students are all over the nuts of Penn (and to a lesser extent Northwestern.) 2011 was just an extension of what we'd been seeing since 2005.

I've always subscribed to the view that distinguishing between the lower T14 is futile. When you take into account clerkships, public interest, self-selection, etc., I just don't think you can rely on NLJ at as granular a level as people want to.

Tiago Splitter wrote:By that criteria no school is distinguishable from the lower T14. Sure every other T14 finished near or above Penn in at least one year, but what sets Penn apart is its consistency in finishing near the top of those rankings every year. That's why risk averse law students are all over the nuts of Penn (and to a lesser extent Northwestern.) 2011 was just an extension of what we'd been seeing since 2005.

I've always subscribed to the view that distinguishing between the lower T14 is futile. When you take into account clerkships, public interest, self-selection, etc., I just don't think you can rely on NLJ at as granular a level as people want to.

I am curious, has anyone done a 5 or 10 year aggregate of NLJ data (and maybe plus clerkship?). It seems to be fairly easy to answer the outlier or consistency debate.

ETA: How about 5/10 year aggregate of salary median/mean for ALL grads 9 month out.

Bronte wrote:The Penn trolling has gotten out of control. A single aberration on the NLJ 250 rankings and suddenly the school is in its own tier. A year ago and Penn was no different than its peer schools. A year more and it'll be the same.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The aberration in 2011 was U Chi. For 2009-2011, Penn was with CLS/U Chi while NYU was a notch behind (for clerkships + firms of 100+).

Bronte wrote:The Penn trolling has gotten out of control. A single aberration on the NLJ 250 rankings and suddenly the school is in its own tier. A year ago and Penn was no different than its peer schools. A year more and it'll be the same.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. The aberration in 2011 was U Chi. For 2009-2011, Penn was with CLS/U Chi while NYU was a notch behind (for clerkships + firms of 100+).

The aberration is that Penn was number one last year, and now all of a sudden posters give special reverence to it. I've already admitted, however, that maybe I was giving short shrift to how well it has performed on the chart in the past.

I think it's hard to make granular distinctions between schools based on the NLJ survey. And I think there is an appreciable effect whereby posters on this forum are overly myopic about NLJ and USNWR, causing there to be "favorites" and "dogs" during each cycle that don't correlate to reality.

r6_philly wrote:I am curious, has anyone done a 5 or 10 year aggregate of NLJ data (and maybe plus clerkship?). It seems to be fairly easy to answer the outlier or consistency debate.

Don't have clerkship data, but here is the 2006-2011 average for the T-14 in the NLJ 250. Yale wasn't in the top 20 in 2008 so I gave them the same number as the 20th ranked school that year. This highlights both the limitations of this data and what a TTT Yale is.